Beijing: In the end, the downfall of Guo Meimei, widely considered China’s most brazen “professional mistress”, came through the same means she achieved fame and notoriety – an indiscriminate series of ostentatious and overly revealing internet blog posts.

Ms Guo, 23, was arrested by police with seven others ahead of the football World Cup final last month, amid a crackdown on the massive illegal online betting on the tournament in China. Rather indiscreetly, she had been bragging to her legion of nearly two million followers on Weibo – China’s broad equivalent of Twitter – about the big bets she was making.

Ms Guo, with her penchant for fast cars, designer brands and documenting her glamour-filled life on social media, has simultaneously captivated China's netizens while infuriating them with her relentless flaunting of her inexplicable wealth - a gleaming example of inequality in a nation grappling with the social divide.

Guo Meimei living the high life, here, seen on a jet-ski. Photo: Supplied

There are the shots of her sunbathing on luxury yachts and her sitting behind stacks of casino chips in Macau. Yet those fall in the subtle category: Ms Guo also once posted a screenshot of her bulging 10-digit bank balance for all to admire.

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On Monday, China’s state broadcaster China Central Television revealed some of the money’s origins, in an astonishing news package complete with a recorded ‘confession’ by a meek Ms Guo and testimony from a sour ex-boyfriend and a snitching personal assistant.

On top of participating in the online World Cup betting syndicate, she admitted to operating an illegal poker den from an inner-city Beijing apartment. She also supplemented her income by having sex with men for money, but never for less than 100,000 yuan ($17,400) an encounter.

Guo Meimei making her 'confession' on CCTV. Photo: Supplied

“I have no shortage of those who want me as their mistress, there are many people who – no matter the price – want to sleep with me for a night,” Ms Guo is shown saying, cutting a very different figure from her online persona with no make–up and dressed in an orange detention centre uniform .

Ms Guo described one arrangement she had with a man in Guangdong.

"[One man] transferred 50,000 yuan to my card. And he gave me another 300,000 Hong Kong dollars to me. We had sexual relations on the day of my arrival,” she said. “The next day I said I would go back to Beijing. He then bought me the air ticket and transferred another 110,000 yuan to my account after I returned.”

Guo Meimei has both fascinated and angered the Chinese public with her lavish lifestyle built on elite connections. Photo: Supplied

The high-stakes poker home game in Beijing began after Ms Guo befriended an unidentified foreign professional poker player on one of her many jaunts to Macau.

A professional dealer was hired, and millions of yuan changed hands at the felt, from which Ms Guo took a 3 to 5 per cent rake.

But most intriguing was her relationship with her “godfather”, a 46-year-old Shenzhen businessman police named only as “Mr Wang” who has also been arrested. Mr Wang paid Ms Guo’s monthly upkeep on top of a retainer, though rumours of him funding Ms Guo’s 60-plus round-trips to Macau are unconfirmed.

"Guo Meimei goes to Macau for gambling a lot. She puts a lot in the games. After winning, she would exchange the money directly to Chinese yuan and save it to her card," Ms Guo's personal assistant Ms. Lu said.

The rise and fall of Ms Guo has enthralled, in an undeniably voyeuristic way, the Chinese public. As well as a revealing glimpse into an extreme yet not altogether isolated example of China’s notorious mistress culture, Ms Guo’s story also reflects the internet’s ability to cut down online celebrities as quickly as they create them – a trait hardly exclusive to China.

CCTV is routinely condemned by legal rights advocates for airing these purported confessions well ahead of any judicial process, and under murky suspicion of police duress. This practice, dubbed “Trial by CCTV”, has already been used to shame the likes of Chinese-American blogger Charles Xue, journalist Gao Yu, and British consultant Peter Humphrey, among others.

But the sense of schadenfreude from China’s raucous online netizens have drowned out the conscientious outrage about the violation of her privacy and legal rights.

Ms Guo’s unpopularity stems from 2011 when she shot to notoriety as a purported employee of China’s Red Cross, and posted photos of herself in luxury sports cars and toting designer handbags.

It sparked a boycott of Red Cross and demands for a thorough investigation. The international humanitarian organisation remains, to a significant degree, tainted by the scandal in China.

On Monday, the Red Cross, through its official microblog, called for an end to the distraction, and for greater attention to be paid to the disaster relief effort in China’s southwest, where an earthquake had claimed more than 380 lives.

“We have some colleagues who are packing up their bags to rush over to the earthquake disaster zone in Zhaotong, other colleagues have spent the entire night organising more relief supplies,” it said on Sunday. “With so many people and places that we need to focus on, let’s look at the real facts and take a breath. Please forget her; we need to get operational again.”

Ms Guo, 23, was arrested by police with seven others ahead of the football World Cup final last month, amid a crackdown on the massive illegal online betting on the tournament in China. Rather indiscreetly, she had been bragging to her legion of nearly two million followers on Weibo – China’s broad equivalent of Twitter – about the big bets she was making.

Ms Guo, with her penchant for fast cars, designer brands and documenting her glamour-filled life on social media, has simultaneously captivated China's netizens while infuriating them with her relentless flaunting of her inexplicable wealth - a gleaming example of inequality in a nation grappling with the social divide.

There are the shots of her sunbathing on luxury yachts and her sitting behind stacks of casino chips in Macau. Yet those fall in the subtle category: Ms Guo also once posted a screenshot of her bulging 10-digit bank balance for all to admire.

On Monday, China’s state broadcaster China Central Television revealed some of the money’s origins, in an astonishing news package complete with a recorded ‘confession’ by a meek Ms Guo and testimony from a sour ex-boyfriend and a snitching personal assistant.

On top of participating in the online World Cup betting syndicate, she admitted to operating an illegal poker den from an inner-city Beijing apartment. She also supplemented her income by having sex with men for money, but never for less than 100,000 yuan ($17,400) an encounter.

“I have no shortage of those who want me as their mistress, there are many people who – no matter the price – want to sleep with me for a night,” Ms Guo is shown saying, cutting a very different figure from her online persona with no make–up and dressed in an orange detention centre uniform .

Ms Guo described one arrangement she had with a man in Guangdong.

"[One man] transferred 50,000 yuan to my card. And he gave me another 300,000 Hong Kong dollars to me. We had sexual relations on the day of my arrival,” she said. “The next day I said I would go back to Beijing. He then bought me the air ticket and transferred another 110,000 yuan to my account after I returned.”

The high-stakes poker home game in Beijing began after Ms Guo befriended an unidentified foreign professional poker player on one of her many jaunts to Macau.

A professional dealer was hired, and millions of yuan changed hands at the felt, from which Ms Guo took a 3 to 5 per cent rake.

But most intriguing was her relationship with her “godfather”, a 46-year-old Shenzhen businessman police named only as “Mr Wang” who has also been arrested. Mr Wang paid Ms Guo’s monthly upkeep on top of a retainer, though rumours of him funding Ms Guo’s 60-plus round-trips to Macau are unconfirmed.

"Guo Meimei goes to Macau for gambling a lot. She puts a lot in the games. After winning, she would exchange the money directly to Chinese yuan and save it to her card," Ms Guo's personal assistant Ms. Lu said.

The rise and fall of Ms Guo has enthralled, in an undeniably voyeuristic way, the Chinese public. As well as a revealing glimpse into an extreme yet not altogether isolated example of China’s notorious mistress culture, Ms Guo’s story also reflects the internet’s ability to cut down online celebrities as quickly as they create them – a trait hardly exclusive to China.

CCTV is routinely condemned by legal rights advocates for airing these purported confessions well ahead of any judicial process, and under murky suspicion of police duress. This practice, dubbed “Trial by CCTV”, has already been used to shame the likes of Chinese-American blogger Charles Xue, journalist Gao Yu, and British consultant Peter Humphrey, among others.

But the sense of schadenfreude from China’s raucous online netizens have drowned out the conscientious outrage about the violation of her privacy and legal rights.

Ms Guo’s unpopularity stems from 2011 when she shot to notoriety as a purported employee of China’s Red Cross, and posted photos of herself in luxury sports cars and toting designer handbags.

It sparked a boycott of Red Cross and demands for a thorough investigation. The international humanitarian organisation remains, to a significant degree, tainted by the scandal in China.

On Monday, the Red Cross, through its official microblog, called for an end to the distraction, and for greater attention to be paid to the disaster relief effort in China’s southwest, where an earthquake had claimed more than 380 lives.

“We have some colleagues who are packing up their bags to rush over to the earthquake disaster zone in Zhaotong, other colleagues have spent the entire night organising more relief supplies,” it said on Sunday. “With so many people and places that we need to focus on, let’s look at the real facts and take a breath. Please forget her; we need to get operational again.”